Former Ranger Traces Troubles to 2004 Fight

Dan LaCouture is among nine former players suing the N.H.L.CreditCreditRyan Conaty for The New York Times

By Jeff Z. Klein

April 11, 2014

Dan LaCouture’s troubles began, he said, on Jan. 5, 2004, when one of his Rangers teammates got into trouble at Madison Square Garden.

LaCouture described it as “that concussion I had at M.S.G. in 2004 against Calgary, when I split my head open on the ice in the fight against Robyn Regehr sticking up for Jed Ortmeyer, who got hit from behind.”

The incident is referred to briefly in a 110-page complaint against the N.H.L. filed in United States District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday on behalf of LaCouture and eight other former players. The lawsuit is the latest accusing the league of fostering a culture of violence and doing too little to prevent traumatic brain injuries.

“I probably had 17 or 18 concussions through my career, five or six documented,” said LaCouture, 36, who operates three Midas muffler shops on Cape Cod. “Just after you have a concussion, you think you’re going to lose your job. So you try to play through it.”

LaCouture attended a lecture by Dr. Ann McKee, a Boston University neuropathologist who has studied athletes’ brains that were damaged by repeated head trauma, and found that he had 90 percent of the symptoms associated with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain condition.

“The only one I don’t have is short-term memory loss,” LaCouture said. “Is dementia inevitable? Probably.”

LaCouture was not known as a brawler, but he had 20 goals and 52 fights in 348 N.H.L. games. Brief and furious, the fight with Regehr started when LaCouture challenged Regehr after a hit on Ortmeyer. LaCouture lost his helmet as they exchanged punches and fell backward from his knees, with Regehr atop him, striking the back of his head on the ice. Knocked unconscious, he was carried to the trainers’ room.

LaCouture tried to return quickly, as players often did before the dangers of brain injury were widely acknowledged.

“I came back six, seven days later,” LaCouture said. “I lasted two periods of the next game, then I missed a month or more.”

LaCouture, who retired in 2009, played for six N.H.L. teams and for teams in the American Hockey League, Switzerland, Kazakhstan and Norway. To him, the 2004 concussion was a turning point in his 14-year career.

“It seems that when I look back, starting from that concussion is when things for me personally and physically started going downhill — my personality, my way of being as a person,” LaCouture said. “Over the years, my father would always say to me: ‘What’s wrong with you? Why do you snap so quickly? Why do you get so angry?’ I’m like, ‘Dad, I don’t mean to — I’m sorry.’ ”

LaCouture said that he experienced mood swings, changes in his personality, depression, headaches, nausea and sensitivity to light and that his symptoms were growing worse with time. Whenever he spins his young daughter around, he said, it makes his head hurt.

LaCouture said he always figured he would play hockey for a long time.

“I’m 36 years old — I saw my career going to 42, 44, for as long as I could,” he said. “It pains me every day that I’m not playing at that level. I just know my head couldn’t take any more.”

Asked about the N.H.L.’s stricter concussion protocol, which allows players ample time to recover from concussions, LaCouture said: “I hope that continues. Unfortunately it wasn’t that way when I was playing.”

He knows some will criticize him for joining the lawsuit and say he is only looking for money.

“But if this can help save players coming up, it’s worth it,” he said. “And maybe it can help the player who does get a concussion to be allowed more time to rest his noggin versus he’s going to lose his job, especially when he’s playing on the third or fourth line.”

Correction:April 18, 2014

An article on Saturday about Dan LaCouture, a former Rangers player who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the N.H.L., quoted incorrectly from comments by Mr. LaCouture about how quickly he came back from a concussion in 2004. He said, “I came back six, seven days later” — not “I came back six, seven games later.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section D, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Former Ranger Traces Troubles to 2004 Fight. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe